Leveraging Data to Detect Potential Human Rights Risks In Seafood Supply Chains

As a member of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF)’s 2023 Data to Safeguard Human Rights Accelerator program, FishWise and PJMF’s Data Practice team have partnered to create an efficient means of detecting potential human and labor rights risks in seafood supply chains.

by Adzan Adlan, Nahla Achi, Danielle Williams, and Alyssa Withrow

Human and labor rights have become a focal point in responsible seafood supply conversations worldwide. Instances of human rights abuses and labor violations, like human trafficking and forced labor, are well documented in supply chains of seafood products sold by U.S. and European retailers. Understanding indicators of human and labor rights risks within seafood supply chains is essential to moving the industry toward upholding decent work for all fishers. Operations in distant water fishing vessels, in particular, can have elevated risks of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and forced labor due to the lack of monitoring and oversight. Workers on distant water vessels face prolonged periods of isolation, are sometimes forced to stay at sea for multiple years, and have little or no connectivity, resulting in an inability to contact family and friends or to report grievances. Research also suggests that vessels engaged in IUU fishing are at higher risk of exploiting or abusing workers. By examining sourcing and vessel-level data, end-buyers can identify higher-risk products, understand why they might be higher-risk, and define necessary steps to prioritize and mitigate risk.

As a first step in social responsibility and traceability, FishWise helps companies understand the current practices and associated risks that exist within their supply chains through expert services:

• Product Risk Assessment: Cross-reference sourcing data with publicly available data on human and labor rights, counter-IUU fishing, and traceability best practices to identify the higher-risk supply chains
• Supplier Questionnaire: Review suppliers’ social responsibility, compliance, and due diligence practices. Develop, implement, and analyze questionnaires to assess the social responsibility, traceability, and counter-IUU fishing practices of first-tier or second-tier suppliers
• Supplier Policies and Practices Deep Dive: Conduct in-depth review and verification of social responsibility and traceability practices of one first-tier or second-tier supplier
• Protocol Review or Traceback: Conduct in-depth review and verification of social responsibility and traceability practices of suppliers, focusing on specific areas of a supply chain (e.g., at-sea transshipment or a fishery improvement project)
• Direct Supplier Engagement: Initiate one-on-one conversations with suppliers to verify policies and build capacity

Out of all these activities performed by FishWise, protocol reviews are one of the most crucial and at the heart of our partnership with PJMF. This service aims to provide our retail partners and their suppliers with guidance on social responsibility and traceability best practices that go beyond what is possible from traditional tracebacks or desktop audits.

We do this by verifying the availability of supply chain data, counter-IUU policies and practices, and human and labor rights policies and practices from upstream suppliers. Additionally, we verify vessel-level identity and activity data via third-party platforms (e.g., Global Fishing Watch).

Through these verification exercises, we not only corroborate self-reported sourcing data from suppliers but also add data robustness and richness to any findings we share with our retail partners. We leverage findings from these projects to help partners identify where and how to prioritize action and resources in their supply chain. By assessing risk as well as the policies and practices of their suppliers, end-buyers can determine where to engage in deeper verification activities or where it is most critical to seek worker perspectives and experiences.

The challenge we face with this service is the need to scale. Currently, we utilize Global Fishing Watch’s Vessel Viewer to obtain vessel-level data. However, due to the manual nature of the tool, it is difficult to rapidly assess multiple vessels at once. As a result, we are limited to evaluating only a small subset of vessels in the guidance we provide to our retail partners.

In partnership with PJMF’s Data Practice team, FishWise is working to provide valuable insights from up-to-date vessel-level information to retail partners and suppliers en masse. We hope this will encourage stronger guidance and create a means for retail partners and suppliers to readily initiate investigations into potential illicit actors in their supply chains. We additionally want to provide in-depth visualizations to properly communicate potential risks and create impact at larger scales than our current manual reporting and recommendations can provide.

Project Objective

The main objective of this project is to produce a scalable vessel analytics solution that detects the presence of certain risk indicators to illuminate potentially illicit activity in our retail partners’ seafood supply chains. The main features of this analytics solution would include integrating traceable seafood sourcing data, detailed vessel identity and activity data, and visualizing key indicators of potential IUU fishing and human and labor rights risks on an interactive dashboard. Utilizing this vessel analytics solution will help retailers and suppliers implement appropriate due diligence to help reduce IUU fishing and human and labor rights risks.

Data Sources, Systems, and Approach

There are various systems and data sources that FishWise will implement to launch a scalable vessel analytics solution successfully. For this project, FishWise will leverage multiple application programming interfaces (APIs) from Global Fishing Watch to extract detailed vessel identity, vessel activity, and fishing event data. Decisions, a no-code rules engine, will evaluate key indicators of IUU fishing, labor, and human rights risks. Lastly, interactive Tableau dashboards will be produced to visually communicate the crucial findings and insights from the risk indicator analyses. These interactive dashboards will allow retailers to quickly see the presence or absence of potential risks in their supply chain and drill down to any suspicious vessel activity that may warrant further investigation. To implement these various systems, FishWise collaborates closely with Delta Analytics, which provides hands-on support from data science professionals.

IUU Fishing & Human Rights Risk Indicators and Rationale

The first major step we must take in implementing the scalable vessel analytics solution is to define the list of key indicators that we can attribute to the potential presence of IUU fishing or human and labor rights risk violations on a vessel. To produce this specific list of indicators, we conducted desktop research on various human and labor rights-related resources, which included:

• SALT Using Seafood Supply Chain Data to Identify Human Rights Risks
• SALT Human and Labor Rights Risk KDEs
• Towards a Responsible Machine Learning Approach to Identify Forced Labor in Fisheries
• IUU Fishing Supply Chain Risk Solution
• Monterey Bay Aquarium, Seafood Watch — Seafood Social Risk Tool

Among these resources, a few key data elements (KDEs) were commonly recommended to be captured at the vessel level to help assess the working conditions at sea.

The following are some of the indicators that we will use in our vessel analytics dashboards with some additional rationale as to how they can be attributed to indicating potential risks on a vessel:

• Time at sea: Risks of human and labor rights issues increase with extended time at sea. When workers are away from port for prolonged periods, they are unable to seek remedies for grievances. Moreover, they face isolation, malnutrition, exhaustion, and the inability to leave their job.
• Gaps in vessel location transmission: This indicates the potential that the vessel is hiding its location and may be engaging in IUU fishing.
• Potential transshipments (vessel encounters): When poorly monitored or regulated, at-sea transshipment (transferring catch, fuel, or personnel between carrier and fishing vessels) may facilitate practices such as increased time at sea that limit traceability and may place workers at risk. By allowing fishing vessels to offload catch and resupply, at-sea transshipment means vessels and the workers on them can stay at sea for years without coming into port. Related indicators include encounter events while in a foreign exclusive economic zone (EEZ), encounter events while in a no-take marine protected area (MPA), and encounter events in a regional fishery management organization (RFMO) without known authorization.
• Potential IUU and distant water fishing activity: Distant water fishing vessels travel long distances and spend prolonged time at sea to fish. They often employ foreign migrant workers, who are especially vulnerable to exploitation. Therefore, fishing activity in foreign EEZs and international waters may indicate a higher risk of human and labor rights issues. Related indicators include fishing activity in foreign exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and high seas and fishing activity in regional fishery management organizations without authorization.
• Vessel Flag (Country) Change: A 2022 study by the Center for Ocean Solutions revealed global risks of labor abuse and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and identified flag state as a risk factor for vessels associated with labor abuse and IUU fishing.

Conclusion

FishWise’s participation in the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation’s Data Practice Accelerator program will facilitate what we believe to be a rapid and efficient assessment of potential human and labor rights risks throughout complex seafood supply chains. While the global seafood industry is fraught with labor and human rights abuses, the resources and the partnerships forged through this project hold an incredible opportunity to create meaningful change.

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